of the habitation is blurred by numerous seizure episodes. Judith did not know how long she would have to stay there. Even though she felt estranged from her family, she did miss them and longed to go home. It hurt her deeply to be sent away, but Mother and George had reassured her it was for her own good that they were doing this. Judith believed her parents thought they were doing the right thing. And they were faithful in visiting Judith on the weekends. Helen and George brought the little siblings, all dressed up. The family posed for photos on the sidewalk in front of the Ryther facility, trying to look like an ordinary family.
Judith recalls sharing a room with approximately five other girls, dormitory style. A separate boys’ dorm was on the other side of the home. She was required to attend high school classes. A heavy-set, black woman, named Chaney, worked as the cook for the facility. Judith instantly bonded with the woman, proclaiming she was the nicest woman in the whole world. Judith slipped away whenever possible to share a few moments of conversation and hugs with Chaney. Even on Judith’s darkest days, Cook Chaney could lift her up with kind words and loving smiles.
Judith ran away from the Ryther home on several occasions, only to be rounded up and brought back. She never stopped plotting to escape and go home. During one runaway episode, Judith attempted to hitchhike her way home, even though she wasn’t sure which direction home was. All she knew was that she was going home. A man picked her up at the roadside, and the next thing Judith remembered was trying to escape from his vehicle like a bunny rabbit from the open mouth of a wolf. Between the time of being picked up and crawling frantically out of a back window of the car in her escape, Judith’s memory had vanished. Judith was found and taken back to the Ryther facility. Later, she wondered if she had had a seizure in the car with the strange man. What had he done to terrify her so?
After twelve months of receiving counseling and attending classes at the Ryther Center, sixteen-year-old Judith gratefully went home to live with her family November 15th of 1960. But, by the next year, at age seventeen, her life was tumbling ferociously toward the edge of a cliff. She was about to receive yet another little sister, Lori, and a new home—Western State Hospital, a mental facility, where she would live, with no chance of escape, (it was assumed) for the next year.
Meanwhile, Judith’s parents and three young siblings moved to a larger home in Lake City, near Seattle. Living space was getting tight.
Western State Hospital, in Tacoma, Washington, a funny farm, a nut house, a lunatic asylum, was a hospital in the 1960’s where the very mentally disturbed were checked in and did not have the option of leaving. Established in 1871, it was first called an “insane asylum” and was located on the site of Fort Steilacoom. Most mental patients were deemed a danger to society and were locked up, having little chance of ever leaving the facility. Many served life sentences there. Radical treatments such as ice water immersion, frontal lobotomies, and electric shock therapy had been practiced on patients at the insane asylum for years. However, the 1960’s brought in a new wave of treatment for the mentally ill—anti-psychotic drugs, which tipped the treatment scale heavily toward drug therapy. The 1975 movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” starring Jack Nicholson, later dramatized the life of patients in mental institutions such as this. For the first time, the public got a peek into the mysterious, daily, at times horrifying, happenings within the walls of a mental hospital. Today, with new treatments available, Western State Hospital continues to treat the mentally ill and evaluates the alleged criminally insane.
How is it that young Judith became a patient in such a facility? She was “voluntarily committed” at seventeen years of age, and was coaxed into signing a voluntary commitment form.
Judith does not remember much about May 19, 1961, just three days before her sister Lori was born, when she was left at Western State Hospital. She cannot remember the majority of her stay at the hospital. One day, mother simply told her, “Okay, Judith, it’s time to go to the hospital now.” Very pregnant mother and George swiftly loaded up Judith and the young ones into the car. The next thing Judith knew, having no idea how many miles they had driven—they could have traveled into another state, according to Judith’s perception—she was looking out the car window at an intimidating, large, brick building. It was the biggest building she had ever seen. She was told that she would be living in this hospital, just for a while, so that doctors could experiment with strong medications to help get rid of her seizures. To Judith, it sort of felt familiar, like just another visit to a doctor, an exercise she and her mother had been performing most of her life. They never stopped hunting for a “cure” to her ailment. If mother told her that this place would help, then it was just the next stop in a never-ending series of medical appointments. Judith did not protest or cry or ask questions. At the hospital, she silently followed medical personnel, away from her mother, stepfather, and young siblings. She was introduced to her small, dormitory-style room, with a narrow rectangle shape. Judith felt like she was stepping into a skinny shoebox. A single bed was situated parallel to the right wall of the room, with a small cabinet on the left side for her clothing. Everything looked stark. I don’t see anything here that looks like home. Judith knew in a moment that this place was nothing like the Ryther Child Center. No, no. Authority was thick in the air. A much bigger authority than the Ryther Child Center had. And the place was gigantic! Judith worried about getting lost in the endless hallways. She looked up and down, left and right, with her eyes; she was certain there were other eyes in all the walls and ceilings looking back at her. Man. There’s no way I can run away from here.
Judith retained only a few, crystallized memories of her eighteen-month stay. She retained a powerful memory of being viscerally afraid of the nurses. Early into her stay, she had formed the impression that the nurses were mean spirited toward her, even—astonishing as it was to Judith—accusing her of faking the seizures. Judith worked to avoid interaction with the nursing staff whenever possible. She had been firmly coached by the nurses to ring a special bell that was situated near her bed whenever she felt a seizure coming on so they could come in the room and observe Judith during seizure activity. But Judith wasn’t inclined to ring the bell: she dreaded the wrath of the nurses after a seizure. It was easier to just “go out” alone.
Judith got a great surprise in the hospital. She noticed and then recognized a young female patient as a classmate she had attended school with for a brief time back home. Oh, so there are other girls like me having problems. Maybe we can be friends! But the surprise quickly turned ugly. Judith noticed that the girl had only hostile energy toward her. One day, while working in the laundry room, a duty that the girls were expected to perform routinely, the ex-classmate switched some of the clean, folded laundry around, relocating the piles to incorrect bins. When the staff discovered the switch, Judith was squarely blamed for purposely placing clothing in the wrong patient bins, just to cause trouble. Judith was outraged. She angrily cast her protests of innocence up against faces of stone. She was told she must be punished for her disrespectful prank, and Judith was placed in “solitary,” a tiny room, approximately four feet by six feet, with only one little window, about he size of Judith’s face, that she could look out if she rose up as tall as possible on tip-toes. Solitary confinement went on for four agonizing days. Judith screamed hysterically at the guards through the door. It wasn’t fair! The other girl did it! Judith asked herself over and over, Why would anybody do this to me? What did I do to deserve this? Why would anybody do this to me…why would anybody do…why would anybody…why would…why…until she slipped into another seizure and then—nothing.
Many years later, Judith would connect her extreme claustrophobia to being locked up in solitary.
Some days in the mental hospital were pleasant for Judith. Every other weekend, her parents and little siblings made the drive over to visit her. At each visit they gave Judith five dollars so that she could make purchases in the hospital store if she needed something. As soon as the family left, Judith hustled over to the hospital store and spent all the money on Payday candy bars. She thought they were especially wonderful candy bars: Salty globs of peanuts and something chewy, pure heaven to Judith’s tastebuds.
When the family came for visits, Judith was allowed to stroll the grounds outside with them. Western State Hospital, with its original core brick building and multiple add-on buildings stood, side by side, like a row of tall people holding hands on acres of neatly trimmed grounds. In 1868,